I just could not use the Droid.Say what you will but in my opinion the iPhone beats the droid is every way (save some minor coverage differences in Cleveland, OH).
Regardless of the stellar savings offered by Verizon Wireless the devices have been returned and our remaining numbers on big red have now been ported over to AT&T.
After talking to a business rep we are now getting a 10% discount on service, and we have devices which are business usable!
I decided to give big red a try and ordered up some Motorola Droids from Verizon Wireless.
iPhones are great, but as a techie it was time to try something new!
The phone was fast, I mean really fast. People have been comparing it to the iPhone 3Gs but I don’t have a 3Gs I only have a 3G. I will say the difference in speed between the 3G and the Droid is staggering!
It only took me about 15 minutes to get completely comfortable with the Droid’s UI and pull out keyboard and maybe another 10 minutes to fully customize the phone to my liking. At this point I decided it was time to setup my email account on the Droid.
This process was painless and simple. I quickly got the Droid connected my to Exchange 2007 server and it began syncing email, contacts and my calendar.
So far this was going very well, fast and functional! Or so I thought.
Upon completion of the sync with my Exchange 2007 server, I opened up the Email app on the Droid.
Wow was this ugly. Gray on Gray background made it hard notice a difference between read and unread messages(The picture below does not convey this well). There was no preview of the email body like on the iPhone, and I could not find a single setting to change any of this.
Fail. While I will say that the Droid does in fact send a reply email, you would never know by glancing at your inbox. There is no change to the message listed in your inbox, no reply arrow or “badge” showing you that something was done with this email. During a long work day dealing with many emails this gets very confusing.
Double Fail. First it fails for the same reason as the reply fails. No indication that you have forwarded the message is displayed in the inbox. However this goes one step beyond to be a double fail when dealing with attachments on the Droid. Exchange 2007/Droid users seem to be completely unable to forward emails with attachments from the phone properly. While the recipient does get an email, there is no message body, just an attachment message.eml. Now this would be ok if you could open the attachment, but it is junk on the receiving end.
As a techie I could not let this go, and began the hunt for fixes. First to the Android Market, where I downloaded a trial of Touchdown. This apparently was the end all be all application for Exchange users on the Droid. It however had the same issues with indicating a message had been replied to and thus was a no go for me especially at the price of $20. Touchdown had its other weaknesses but that will be for another post (maybe). This then brought me to alldroid.org. An Android development community. There I was greated by many other incredible tech savvy people, who were also not content with their Droids for various reasons. Surely there would be answers here…..
We knew good and well this thing was coming sometime in November, and now Verizon Wireless has made it official: the Motorola DROID will hit Big Red on November 6th for $199 on contract (after a $100 mail-in rebate). Naturally, the DROID itself is just the first of what could be many Android-laced phones coming to the carrier, and Verizon Wireless CMO John Stratton even stated that the phone “is wide open” — pretty big words from a company like VZW. Android 2.0 will be front and center, along with Visual Voicemail, a 3.7-inch display (854 x 480 resolution), 5 megapixel camera (with dual-LED flash), a bundled 16GB memory card and a beta version of Google Maps Navigation(!). For those wondering, yeah — the DROID is the first phone to offer that, which transforms Google Maps into a turn-by-turn routing system that’ll have your dedicated TomTom / Garmin trembling in fear. There’s also a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 3G, WiFi, voice-activated search and over-the-air Amazon MP3 downloads. With all that, who needs the iPhone, right Ivan?
Continue reading Motorola DROID official on Verizon: $199 on contract, coming November 6th (video)
Two weeks ago, Geohot released his blackra1n iPhone 3.1.2 jailbreak. The blackra1n jailbreak software worked with all iPhones and iPod touches running on iPhone 3.1.2 firmware except for the newer 8GB iPod touch (MC models) that Apple released after the September 9 event. The blackra1n jailbreak also did not work on the newer iPhone 3GS which Apple patched the 24kpwn exploit in. blackra1n RC2 works with all iPhone and iPod touches, but the newer iPod touch and iPhone are only tethered jailbreaks. Tethered means that you will need to run blackra1n each time you reboot your iPhone or iPod touch. If you were an iPhone 3G user, you most likely had to try many different methods to get blackra1n to work. Geohot has fixed the iPhone 3G problem so blackra1n should now jailbreak without any problem.
If you already did jailbreak your iPhone or iPod touch, you don’t need to use blackra1n again.
We knew Verizon Wireless would soon be throwing caution to the wind in an effort to sway uncommitted smartphone buyers towards Big Red, and it looks like the November-bound Motorola Droid will be VZW’s anti-iPhone. The spot, which launched tonight and can be view in its entirety after the break, is a 30 second clip that begins by mocking Apple’s cutesy music and iconic font typically seen in iPhone plugs. It reels off a number of things that the iPhone can’t do, and then abruptly goes into full-on tease mode by flashing glimpses of a robot-controlled future and a tagline that simply states: “Droid Does.” No shots of the actual Motorola Droid (or Sholes, as it was known in the past) are shown, but a dedicated teaser portal has already been erected; through that, we’re told that the phone will boast Android 2.0 and a 5 megapixel camera. At this point, we’d say the gloves are definitely off — AT&T, have anything to say for yourself, or is the iPhone doing just fine on its own?
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]